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Stay home, keep your distance, and do not touch! Words we hear all the time now, but it’s alright because we now have so many ways to communicate.
Do you remember “Reach out – reach out and touch someone?”
If you watched television in the late 70s, you probably didn’t just read those words — you sang them along with the wildly popular commercials for Bell Telephone that ran from 1979 into the mid-1980s for AT&T.
This heartwarming ad campaign showed how phones could connect friends and family, no matter the distance, no matter the depth of emotions. Telephone “landlines” were the fastest way to communicate and the only way to hear the voice of that person you really wanted to connect with.
By now, my WiVLA family, you may be, like me, suffering a bit of ‘technology fatigue’ from the flood of Zooms, Facebook shares, Skypes, Facetimes, TikToks, and Instagram Lives. A dear WiVLA friend called me on my cell phone (no landline here!) and it was such a relief to focus on one person and to enjoy hearing her voice, as we shared some real-time spontaneous laughter. This smart lady told me she chooses one person to call each day, just to check in and say “Hello” in a warm, personable moment.
Since this is the closest we’ll get right now to ‘in person’ visits for a while, I’d like you to consider making a call a day to someone you miss or who may be missing you.
To encourage you (and give you a nostalgic chuckle) I’ve added links to two of Bell Telephone’s classic ads.
Here’s one of the first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO17B-ACRn0
Here’s one of the later ones, a compilation of clips from all the previous “reach outs”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emzK9dfL0qM
I hope you get a kick out of these creative, award-winning ads. I also hope the catchy jingle will inspire you to “Reach out. Reach out and touch someone. Reach out. Call up and just say ‘hi’.”
No gloves or masks required with this touch!
-Lee-
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Last month we asked our members to share their work with us. We had several submissions from our talented visual and literary members. I hope their work inspires others to not only share work with us but ignites that creative juice within all of us.
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Gwynne Ross
Our member, Gwynne Ross, loves to create dolls, puppets, and sculptures. Gwynne is a highly accomplished artist in addition to WiVLA; she is also in the Texas Association of Original Doll Artists (TAODA), Visual Arts Alliance (VAA), and the Houston Puppetry Guild. She has also had the honor of exhibiting her work at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Jung Center, and at the International Quilt Festival. Gwynne credits her thirty-five years working in the Houston photography industry with her exceptional ability to understand the many facets of the human body. If you would like to learn more about our member Gwynne Ross, you can visit her website, http://www.gwynneross.com/.
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Kay Cox
Kay L. Cox is a visual artist and poet, she currently lives in San Antonio, Texas. Kay is the winner of the 2008/2009 Robert Clark Appreciation Award. Ib addition to being a member of WiVLA she is also a member of Spectrum Writers Guild, Gulf Coast Poets, and The Poetry Society of Texas. Her poems have been published in several Texas Poetry Calendars, Map of Austin, Sol Magazine, That Thing We Do, and anthologies. Kay has shared a recent poem with us.
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Invisible Enemy
“We’re all just walking each other home.” Ram Das
Almost overnight you crept into the world
with your deadly gaze.
How dare you!
You travel invisibly through airports,
ships at sea, country to country
until your fingers crawl
into my landscape,
threaten me, my loved ones
catching us unaware, empty-handed
without systems to cope.
TV channels blast figures
of your latest conquests,
tell us to get prepared
while death sits at our doorstep.
So we shut down.
No matter who you are
you can’t come in to visit,
to console, to gift us.
Caregivers thrown into chaos,
the old and vulnerable hide
behind closed doors watching
you with fearful eyes.
New rules posted:
Wash your hands,
Stay home.
Don’t touch your face.
No groups over 10 people.
Social distance at six feet
Cancel school and church
Grab what you can while you can,
tacos and margaritas at the drive-thru
as the world stops spinning
to watch your every move,
and wonder how long you will stay.
We pause, we pray,
look at each other
drop our prejudices,
our pride, our greed, our arrogance
to finally realize we are all one.
We are all in this together.
We are all just walking each other home.
© 3/21/2020, Kay Cox
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Lane Devereux won an Honorable Mention ribbon at the TriCounty Quilt Guild's biannual quilt show in March for her quilt "Swirl." Her quilt was originally made as Lane's entry for WiVLA's 2018 collaboration show. Congratulations, Lane!
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Debbie has shared several of her new articles with us. You can click on the images below to read them.
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We'd love to take this time to connect. If you are interested, please send your items to newsletter@wivla.org. There is no deadline for this content.
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Member, Judith Shamp, sent an idea to the newsletter and I thought it sounded like a fantastic idea. Judith says that she has been cooking a lot more and would like to have some new recipes sent to her via a good ol' fashioned recipe exchange. I think this is a wonderful way to pass along our personal favorite meals with one another. To kick it off I've chosen two of my favorites. You can click the pictures below to be taken to the recipes.
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If you feel so inclined you are welcome to send in a recipe to the newsletter and I will feature one or two a month. Or perhaps you can start your own exchange amongst friends!
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Sandi Stromberg has recently learned that three of her poems will be published in the coming months. Her first piece is, "Leaving Comfort, Texas on FM 473," it has been accepted for the 2021 Texas Poetry Calendar. Her second poem, "To Believe in Angels and Demons," will appear in a new anthology, Purifying Wing, from Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. Lastly, her piece, "Reading Faust to my Comatose Husband," written in response to Mariano Fortuny's Fantasy on Faust, can be read online in The Ekphrastic Review's Fortuny challenge responses (by using the Search box).
- Amanda Wegner shared three announcements with us for this month's newsletter. First, she has received the Yuyi Morales Diversity Scholarship which is awarded through the Children's Book Academy's workshop, "The Craft & Business of Writing Children's Picture Books." Secondly, she was selected to perform a standup comedy set at, The Best of the Fringe, which will be held at Midtown Arts and Theater Center (MATCH) on June 13. Lastly, she was offered a scholarship to attend the Rainbow Weekend Writing Workshop at The Writing Barn in Austin in November.
- Jo Zider will be having a one-person show of her recently-completed series of relief paintings: EARTH AT THE EDGE. The show runs from June 3 - August 21, 2020, at the Art Gallery of The University of Houston Clear Lake campus, Bayou Building. The reception is June 4, 2020, from 5:00-7:00 pm. An artist talk will be given during the reception and at a later date that is TBA. See a few of the images under 'relief paintings' on website Zider's website, http://jozider.com/
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